Traditionally base stations or cells in wireless wide area networks, such as cellular networks, have been transmitting continuously on some carriers, for instance on known broadcast carriers, i.e. on known and dedicated carrier frequencies.
In this way mobile stations have been able to determine which base stations or cells are in their neighbourhood through merely scanning all possible carriers and frequencies, detect data identifying the base station or cell in question and then connect to the network via the most suitable base station.
However, in future networks, such as LTE (Long Term Evolution) it is of interest for the base stations to be silent, e.g. for the purpose of reducing energy consumption as well as inter-cell interference, in a cell for long durations of time, typically much longer than the ordinary frame lehgth used for ordinary communication. This also makes it harder for mobile stations to determine what frequencies and carriers are provided in their vicinity such carriers and consequently also to connect to a radio communication network.
There is therefore a need for improvement in this field of technology.
The present invention is directed towards improving on this situation, where base stations may be silent during long periods of time, e.g. are operating in a low activity mode.